Iron Cast(92)

“Did I ever tell you why I got this?” he asked.

Ada glanced over to see the leafless tree inked on his forearm, its branches black and twisting. She shook her head.

“When I was a little boy, I used to climb a tree just like this every day of the week.” He rubbed his thumb absently along the trunk. There was a single line etched between his eyebrows at the memory. “Then one morning I went out to climb, and they’d hanged a man from the branches. After that, I never went near it. I started having nightmares so bad that I woke the neighbors. Finally, months later, my mother made me pick a bunch of wildflowers from the yard. Then she took me by the hand and led me straight down the road to that old tree. There were budding leaves on it and a bird’s nest right where the rope had been tied. And my mother said to me, ‘Charles, sometimes there’s more bad in this world than good, and sometimes it’s the other way round. But nature ain’t good or bad, and it can’t help that some people get so mixed up that they can’t tell one from the other.’”

They passed briefly into the sunlight. Charlie’s eyes flashed golden, while the bruising on his face shone in ugly contrast.

“She told me that because of people like that, I wasn’t going to have a lot of choices in this life,” he said. “But one thing I could always choose was to do more good than bad. Then she climbed up to sit on the lowest branch, and I sat beside her, and we dropped the flowers one by one in remembrance, until the wind took them all away. The day she got sick, I got this tattoo, so that I would never forget what she told me.”

There was a hitch in his voice at the last, and his Adam’s apple lurched with a swallow.

“Ada, there’s nothing you can say or do to convince me that you’re a bad person,” he said. “I just think you get so caught up in the choices you don’t have that you forget the one you do.”

Ada had a memory of her own mother pulling Ada’s hair into braids and telling her that if everyone would just give more than they took, then the world would be a better place. Maybe there was still a chance for her to do more good than bad in her life. On impulse, Ada reached out to take Charlie’s forearm in her hands. She ran her fingertips along the tree, tracing the branches, then entwined her fingers with his.

If she was honest with herself, she’d known a long time ago that she and Charlie had left “simple” behind. But maybe it was better this way. Maybe it was worth it.

Now that the painful knot in her chest had started to loosen, Ada realized that she had no idea where they were going right now. They couldn’t go back to the Cast Iron, or anyplace else where Johnny might think to look for them. With the HPA on their trail too, there might not be a safe place in all of Boston.

Ada glanced over her shoulder at Corinne, to see if she had shaken off the despondency that had claimed her at the waterfront. In the past, Corinne had always met her gaze with instinctual accuracy, but this morning Corinne’s eyes were locked on her feet. Ada looked ahead again with a pang. When she and Corinne weren’t in step, the whole world was off balance. Corinne was always the one with the plans and the drive to set them in motion. Ada was more comfortable pointing out the flaws in the plan and then salvaging it whenever Corinne decided to go ahead anyway. But they’d been walking for fifteen minutes now, and she still had not heard a word from Corinne.

What if their escape was just delaying the inevitable? What if Madeline’s death was for nothing?

“I don’t know what to do next,” Ada said, not loud enough for Corinne or Saint to hear. Barely loud enough for Charlie to hear.

He squeezed her hand a little tighter.

“I think I know where we can go,” he said.

Eva Carson lived above the Red Cat, behind a black door with a permanent sign reading: PRIVATE. Charlie didn’t seem concerned about it when he knocked, despite the ungodly hour of the morning. The staircase was at the back of the club, blending in with the mahogany-paneled walls. Corinne waited at the bottom of the steps with Ada and Saint, thinking about how eerie the club was in the empty daytime. The tables were all stacked with chairs, and the bar was polished and bare. There was an abandoned mop and bucket onstage.

Eva answered the door in a violet silk robe, her hair a tangled mess around her shoulders. She said something sharp to Charlie, then glared down the stairs at them. Finally she snapped something else and disappeared back inside. The door slammed shut.

“That didn’t sound good,” Ada said.

“It’s all jake,” Charlie said. “She said we could crash in the wine cellar for a few hours.”

“And then what?” Corinne asked.

They couldn’t hide in the Red Cat indefinitely. Corinne hadn’t even wanted to come here in the first place. Eva had told her to stay out of her way, and Corinne was inclined to take that seriously.

The wine cellar was the size of the common room in the Cast Iron, and Corinne was momentarily impressed by the rows upon rows of corked bottles tilted on the shelves. In the dim light, the bottles reminded Corinne of the handful of sea glass her brother had shown her one summer on Martha’s Vineyard, all dusky greens and oceanic blues.

Charlie had rustled up some blankets from somewhere and was laying them on the floor. Saint had already flopped down on one, burying his head in his arms. Corinne slipped down another tight aisle of shelves, running her fingers along the glass. She pulled out a bottle and tried to read the label, but it was in German, accompanied by a sketch of a castle.